The total capacity of Three Gorges Reservoir（TGR） and Danjiangkou Reservoir（DJR） is large and has significant seasonal fluctuations, which give rise to crustal instability. In this research, we focus on studying the temporal and spatial variation of crustal deformation in Hubei Province caused by reservoir impoundment of TGR and DJR.The Digital Elevation Model, historical hydrological information, GPS monitoring data and load-induced deformation model are combined to monitor the crustal deformation. The modeled results indicate that in the trapezoidal area between the TGR and DJR, the average vertical deformations at different latitudes have different variation tendencies. The vertical deformation modulus and fluctuation amplitude are larger at the latitude of 33 N/32.5 N from 2003 to 2006 and at the latitude of 31 N/32.5 N from 2008 to 2014, while the latter are much larger than the former. Moreover, from2008 to 2014, the frequency and the intensity of seismic activities are all enhanced significantly in this region. The modeled results at the GPS sites are consistent with the vertical displacement of GPS monitoring results in trends and the waveform. It can be inferred that the seasonal deformation is elastic. The horizontal deformation components have the same variation trends with that at each GPS monitoring station,which demonstrates that the whole region is moving toward the southeast. The spatial variation of crustal deformation demonstrates that the impoundment of TGR in2003 causes significant vertical displacements, with the maximum modulus of 32 mm downward located in Xiangjiang River＇s estuary. When the water storage increases, the maximum value will become larger, and the location will move toward the upstream.Besides, the earthquakes occurred more frequently in the region with maximum deformation modulus.
Previous studies suggest that tidal friction gives rise to the secular deceleration of the Earth rotation by a quantity of about 2.25 ms/cy. Here we just consider additional contributions to the secular Earth rotation deceleration. Atmospheric solar semi-diurnal tide has a small amplitude and certain amount of phase lead. This periodic global air-mass excess distribution exerts a quasi-constant torque to accelerate the Earth＇s spin rotation. Using an updated atmospheric tide model, we re-estimate the amounts of this atmospheric acceleration torque and corresponding energy input, of which the associated change rate in LOD（length of day） is-0.1 ms/cy. In another aspect, evidences from space-geodesy and sea level rise observations suggest that Earth expands at a rate of 0.35 mm/yr in recent decades, which gives rise to the increase of LOD at rate of 1.0 ms/cy. Hence, if the previous estimate due to the tidal friction is correct, the secular Earth rotation deceleration due to tidal friction and Earth expansion should be 3.15 ms/cy.
The Hilbert-Huang transform （HHT） is used to analyze the time series from nine gravimeter （SG） stations and 22 broadband seismometers to investigate the anomalous signals superconducting prior to the great 2010 Maule earthquake. The results show that seven SG time series and 20 broadband seismometer time series have anomalous signals lasting about one to three days before the earthquake occurrence. The anomalous signals appear around the frequency bands 0.07Hz and 0.15Hz in SG records while around the frequency band 0. 13Hz -0.2Hz in seismic records, and the reason why they appear in different bands might be attributed to the intrinsic nature and different sensitivities of different kinds of instruments. Because more than 87% records have the anomalous signals prior to the earthquake, and no typhoon event is found in our chosen time window, we may conclude that the anomalous signals might be precursory signals of the great 2010 Maule event. However, we do not rule out other possible excitation sources.
The 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake,occurred on 11 March,2011,is a great earthquake with a seismic magnitude Mw9. 1,before which an Mw7. 5 earthquake occurred. Focusing on this great earthquake event,we applied Hilbert-Huang transform（ HHT） analysis method to the one-second interval records at seven superconducting gravimeter（ SG） stations and seven broadband seismic（ BS） stations to carry out spectrum analysis and compute the energy-frequency-time distribution. Tidal effects are removed from SG data by T-soft software before the data series are transformed by HHT method. Based on HHT spectra and the marginal spectra from the records at selected seven SG stations and seven BS stations we found anomalous signals in terms of energy. The dominant frequencies of the anomalous signals are respectively about 0. 13 Hz in SG records and 0. 2 Hz in seismic data,and the anomalous signals occurred one week or two to three days prior to the event. Taking into account that in this period no typhoon event occurred,we may conclude that these anomalous signals might be related to the great earthquake event.
Large earthquakes cause observable changes in the Earth’s gravity field, which have been detected by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). Since most previous studies focus on the detection of near-field gravity effects, this study provides the results from the medium- to far-field gravity changes caused by the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake that are recorded within GRACE monthly solutions. Utilizing a spherical-earth dislocation model we documented that large-scale signals predominate in the global field of the coseismic gravity changes caused by the earthquake. After removing the near-field effects, the coseismic gravity changes show a negative anomaly feature with an average magnitude of -0.18×10-8 m·s-2 in the region ranging ～40° from the epicenter, which is considered as the 'medium ffield' in this study. From the GRACE data released by Center for Space Research from August 2002 to December 2008, we retrieved the large-scale gravity changes smoothed with 3 000 km Gaussian ffilter. The results show that the coseismic gravity changes detected by GRACE in the medium field have an average of (-0.20±0.06)×10-8 m·s-2, which agrees with the model prediction. The detection confirms that GRACE is sensitive to large-scale medium-field coseismic gravitational effects of mega earthquakes, and also validates the spherical-earth dislocation model in the medium field from the perspective of satellite gravimetry.
Jin Li1,2,3 and Wenbin Shen1,3,4, 1 Department of Geophysics, School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China 2 Key Laboratory of Geodynamic Geodesy of Chinese Academy, Wuhan 430077, China 3 Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment and Geodesy (Ministry of Education), Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China 4 State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan 430079, China
In this study, we propose a simple linear least squares estimation method(LLS) based on a Fourier transform to estimate the complex frequency of a harmonic signal. We first use a synthetically-generated noisy time series to validate the accuracy and effectiveness of LLS by comparing it with the commonly used linear autoregressive method(AR). For an input frequency of 0.5 m Hz, the calculated deviations from the theoretical value were 0.004‰and 0.008‰ for the LLS and AR methods respectively; and for an input 5 10 6attenuation,the calculated deviations for the LLS and AR methods were 2.4% and 1.6%. Though the theory of the AR method is more complex than that of LLS, the results show LLS is a useful alternative method. Finally, we use LLS to estimate the complex frequencies of the five singlets of the0S2 mode of the Earth’s free oscillation. Not only are the results consistent with previous studies, the method has high estimation precisions, which may prove helpful in determining constraints on the Earth’s interior structures.
Based upon seven superconducting gravimeter （SG） records of 20 000 h length after the 2004 Sumatra earthquake, four methods, namely the ensemble empirical mode decomposition （EEMD）, the multi-station experiment （MSE） technique, the autoregressive （AR） method and the product spec- trum analysis （PSA） method, are chosen jointly together to detect the inner core translational modes （1S1）. After the conventional pretreatment, each of the seven simultaneous residual gravity series is di- vided into five segments with an 80% overlap, and then EEMD is applied to all the 35 residual SG se- ries as a dyadic filter bank to get 35 filtered series. After then, according to different stations and dif- ferent time windows, five new simultaneous gravity datasets are obtained. After using MSE for each of the five new datasets, the AR method is used to demodulate some known harmonic signals from the new sequences that obtained by using MSE, and three demodulated product spectra are obtained. Then, according to two criterions, two clear spectral peaks at periods of 4.548 9±2.3×10^-5 and 3.802 3±3.2×10^-5 h corresponding respectively to the singlets m=-1 and m=＋l are identified from various spectral peaks, and they are close to the predictions of the 1066A model given by Rieutord （2002）, but no spectral peak corresponding to the singlet m=0 is found. We conclude that the selected two peaks might be the ob- served singlets of the Slichter triplet.
